Past Projects

Innovative Regional SME Export Strategies

Over the course of this 30-month project (July 2011-December 2013) funded by the U.S. Economic Development Administration, the MSU Center for Community Development project team identified barriers to exporting for Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs), and created detailed export strategies for businesses in the EUPRPDC and EMCOG regions. A major goal of these strategies included the identification of exporting resources and assets available to small businesses from State and Federal agencies. MSU CCED conducted aggressive outreach to disseminate this knowledge in a series of workshops, conferences, and webinars. One of these events, the Small Business Export Finance Solutions in the Global Economy Workshop, educated commercial lenders about the opportunities for export financing using federal loan guarantees. MSU CCED also worked with its partners in East Michigan, St. Clair County, and the Eastern Upper Peninsula to conduct site visits with over 25 businesses and disseminate knowledge about state and federal export resources. In addition, the project team held three conferences on binational regional collaboration in the Twin Sault and Blue Water Regions. These conferences encouraged greater binational regional collaboration between Michigan and Ontario, and have led to the current project described on the home page.

The Michigan State University Center for Community and Economic Development (CCED) project team sought to identify small business capital needs and the barriers to capital access in Northern Lower Michigan in a research project supported by a U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Business Enterprise Grant (RBEG). The study was conducted in late 2010. CCED had earlier identified insufficient access to capital as a major obstacle to economic recovery and future business growth in its study titled Investment 101: Capital Access and Investment Strategies in Northern Michigan and the Eastern Upper Peninsula, funded in part with a U.S. Economic Development Administration grant. However, the CCED team wanted to develop a more complete and nuanced understanding of small business capital access conditions in rural Northern Lower Michigan. The team believed a more complete understanding of these conditions could lead lenders, small businesses, and policy makers to take actions to improve small business capital access.

This study assessed the potential to create and sustain a bio-based manufacturing capacity in the Lansing Tri-County Region. To determine this potential, a rigorous analysis of the needed bio-manufacturing inputs, industrial infrastructure, intellectual capacity and regional leadership was conducted. While this analysis applies to the general bio-manufacturing sector with short-term implications for manufacturing such consumer goods as home products, computers, textiles, clothing, and furniture, our focus is the automotive bio-manufacturing sector. The orientation of this study is based on a recognition of the unique economic strength and potential the Tri-County Region has in the global automotive manufacturing market.

While some communities are poised to help their citizens benefit from the increasing role of technology in their economy, others are ill-prepared to move forward in the knowledge economy, leaving them vulnerable to economic decline. This report applies analysis of knowledge economy indicators, based on the Progressive Policy Institute's Technology and New Economy Project, for the State of Michigan at the county level.

The transformation from an industrial to a knowledge-based economy at the close of the twentieth century has been well documented by scholars of planning and economics. Cities and their metropolitan areas are critical to this transition to an economy based on knowledge. A knowledge-based economy is strongly linked to the creation of highly-skilled, well-paying jobs. The knowledge economy affects existing enterprises, while also offering opportunities for new and emerging enterprises to offer new products and services.